So 2012 has begun, and to celebrate, I’m giving away two e-books on Kindle. For the next several days, you can download The Dishonored Dead and No Shelter for free. That’s right — FREE.
So if you haven’t checked these out (and even if you have), please download them and help spread the word. Even if you don’t have a Kindle, there are plenty of apps to read on practically any device. Enjoy!
P.S. My friend Adam Perry’s children’s book Mister Ray is currently free too. Download it!
It’s almost the end of 2011, which means that 2012 is right around the corner, which means the ancient Mayans are going to come back from the dead and eat us all.
That’s how the prophecy goes, right?
Anyway, instead of doing a rambling post about this past year, I thought I would just share my e-book numbers for the year, split up by each month. I find it’s interesting stuff, looking at the progression (I’m a nerd like that). Granted, these past two months have been great for sales, which no doubt is thanks to the holidays.
(Note that I’m also not including the free downloads for The Silver Ring and In the Land of the Blind, which number over 30,000. Also note that these are for Kindle and Nook; Sony and iBooks and Smashwords only gave me a handful more, but wasn’t worth my time adding up for each month as Smashwords’ spreadsheets can be tricky. Also note the bump in sales come June; that was after The Silver Ring finished its free promotion and, surprisingly, kept selling like hotcakes. And finally, note that there are still two full days left in December, so the numbers listed are as of right now.)
For the year, I’ve sold nearly 11,500 e-books. My bestsellers were, hands down, The Serial Killer’s Wife (3,175) and The Calling (3,663). My best 99 center, besides The Silver Ring (2,534), was Spooky Nook (671), which really picked up there near the end of the year.
What can we learn from this?
Who knows.
People have told me that the e-book bubble will burst soon, and maybe it will, though I don’t think so. It’s clear that e-books is where the future of publishing is headed. Print books will always be around, but e-books will definitely begin to dominate the marketplace. And of course, in terms of sales, what goes up must come down … and eventually (hopefully) go back up. I have more books that I plan to release this year (about five or six), and if I’ve learned one thing this past year, it’s the more books, the better.
Actually, let me rephrase that.
The more quality books, the better.
Great cover art, great product description — they’re both very important, but if you don’t have a quality book to sell, readers will quickly sniff it out and sales will drop.
So will my sales progress throughout 2012? I certainly hope so. But there’s really no way of telling.
The only thing I can say for sure is that 2011 was a pretty good year.
Here’s hoping 2012 will be even better.
I read sixty books in 2011, counting novels and short story collections and graphic novels and audiobooks (yes, I do count listening to a book the same as reading a book). I enjoyed many of those books. Below are the books that I really enjoyed, in no particular order except in which I read/listened to them.
Novels:
Stories:
Audiobooks:
Nonfiction:
(I’m also currently reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King, about only 200 pages in. It’s good so far, and practically everyone who has read it says it’s amazing, and while it might be, I won’t prematurely add it to the list. Hopefully it will be on next year’s list.)
Note: I also purposely made sure there were more male authors on this list so that it creates a big hoopla that will occupy people’s minds for a few days and then dissipate as they become enraged at something else just as asinine. (Okay, not really.)
So how about you? What books did you read this year that you really enjoyed?
The deadline to submit a story for the 5th Annual Micro Award is fast approaching. In fact, despite posting the guidelines here back in October, I almost forgot about it completely. I’ve been fortunate with the Micro Award in the past — two years a finalist, one year a runner-up — and while I don’t really see my luck holding out much longer, I figure it still doesn’t hurt to submit something.
And looking back at the stories I’ve published this past year, I see that I haven’t really published much at all. 2010 saw sixteen stories published in both online and print, while 2011 saw only six stories published only online, and the majority of those were at the beginning of the year, meaning most of them had been accepted in 2010. Obviously, my focus has been elsewhere this past year, but still, that’s a pretty low number.
Anyway, I decided there are two strong stories to submit, but I can only submit one, and here’s where I would like your help. I’m split between my stories “Fright X” from Storyglossia and “Crash Test Dummy” from PANK — one real, one surreal. If you have a few minutes and can check them out (or if you’ve already read them when they were first published), let me know which you think I should send. That would be great.
Of course, if the story I end up submitting doesn’t place as a finalist, I will blame you endlessly, so no pressure!
The New York Times on the Libraries vs. Publishers E-Book Tug of War:
So if you unwrap a new e-reading device this Christmas, don’t expect to just borrow endless e-books from your local library. That would be silly! You can, however, browse through a few of my e-books, which are modestly priced.
Merry Christmas!
It’s about time I came clean about something rather important. Don’t worry — I’m not admitting to any major crimes … yet. But I want to tell you about the first novel I self-published nearly a year ago.
Wait, some of you might be thinking. A year ago? But you published The Calling in April.
And right you would be.
The Calling was the first novel I published under my own name.
Before that, I published a novel under a different name.
Some eagle-eyed readers probably already figured it out. Honestly, I didn’t really do much to try to hide the fact.
What fact, you might be asking?
Quite simply that I wrote this book:
Yes, that’s right. I am Z. Constance Frost. Or Z. Constance Frost is me. Either way, I’m the author of No Shelter.
Surprise!
As I explained during last night’s two live readings, the entire thing was meant to be an experiment that didn’t go very well. You see, I wrote No Shelter years ago. In fact, in the spring of 2009 when the whole Hint Fiction thing came about, my agent was shopping around No Shelter. He was sending it out under a pen name, because that’s what I requested. I knew I wanted to do a female assassin series, but I figured since it would be a straight series (five or seven or however many books) it would be best to put them under a different name, as the books I planned (hoped) to publish under my own name would be different standalone novels. Besides, the series is about a female assassin, so who better to author the books than a female writer?
And so, after some creative thinking, Z. Constance Frost was born.
I liked the name. My agent liked the name. It has a distinct ring to it that definitely sticks in a reader’s head, and that was what I was going for.
But, as usual, though there were several nibbles from publishers, nobody took a bite, and so into the digital drawer the book went.
Until late 2010 when I started to seeing the disturbing trend in publishing and saw some other authors having success self-publishing their work digitally, and I thought about No Shelter and figured why not. Besides, I saw this as a great opportunity to pull a Richard Bachman.
If you’re unaware, Stephen King in his early career published four novels under the pen name Richard Bachman (five, I guess, counting Thinner, though that was the book that eventually made the whole truth come to light, and besides, I don’t believe King was really trying to hide the fact he was the true author in that book to begin with). King’s publisher was afraid he would oversaturate the market with his own work, so they released the novels under the pen name. It was a big secret. Nobody really knew King was Bachman, unlike nowadays when everyone knows J. D. Robb is really Nora Roberts (also nowadays publishers don’t give a shit about over-saturation as long as it sells).
You see, it was a marketing thing. Dean Koontz used to do the same, publishing works in different genres under different names. Only, from what I understand, Koontz decided in the end it was a bad idea, and, I’m assuming, can become confusing for readers who begin to become fans of one particular author, even though that author isn’t real.
Had No Shelter sold, the publisher might have gone ahead and published it under the pen name, but would have wanted me to make it clear that I was the actual author. After all, somebody has to help market the thing, and as we’ve discussed before, it almost always falls on the author’s shoulders.
So when I realized I could self-publish it, the fact that practically nobody had to know the truth was appealing. I created a blog, as well as Gmail and Facebook and Twitter accounts, and pretended to be this single mother of two living just outside of Washington, D.C. It was going to be fun.
And it was fun, at first. But the truth is it’s hard enough trying to focus on writing for and promoting just one writer — namely me — let alone writing for and promoting another writer — like, you know, Z. Constance Frost. Just how do you get the word out about a very new writer? I did a post here last year, which even included an interview with Z. Constance Frost. She in turn interviewed me at her website for my blog tour of The Calling. I included an excerpt from her book in the back of my book, and she included an excerpt from my book in the back of her book. Sometimes she would even leave comments here on this website (!).
Cute? Clever? Pathetic? Asinine?
No matter what you call it, it was exhausting.
As I began to make more sales and money with my own books, I began to spend less time keeping Z. Constance Frost alive. I wanted to start working on another Holly Lin novel, but the truth was the sales for No Shelter were so low that I didn’t see much point. It made more sense to keep promoting myself, as my books had started selling well. Maybe if Frost had more books out there would be more sales, but as it is No Shelter has sold just over 300 copies for the year, with the e-book being priced between 99 cents and $2.99. Compare that do The Serial Killer’s Wife or The Calling, both which have already sold over 400 units each this month alone, and you’ll see my problem.
I wish things could have been different, truly. I wish Z. Constance Frost could continue living her imaginary life with her imaginary children (hell, No Shelter is even dedicated to her children!). I wish I could keep this secret going for the next couple of years, as more and more Holly Lin books became available and “she” grew a bigger readership (nay, fan base!) and then, at the peak, I would somehow let it slip that it was me.
But, alas, it was not meant to be.
Z. Constance Frost’s byline will remain on No Shelter until later this year when the second book comes out. Then No Shelter gets a new cover and Z. Constance Frost will be no more.
Which is sad.
I was really getting to like her, despite the fact she was apparently a pretty slow writer.
But, in all honesty, her two kids are complete brats.
Anyway, so this is my confession. The truth is out now. Not sure if it was the best way to “out” myself, though I don’t think there’s proper etiquette when it comes to something like this. But now you all know my dirty little secret, the time I tried to pull a Richard Bachman.
Which is not to say that, who knows, I might not try it again at some point down the line.
Only time will tell.
For now, do yourself a favor if you haven’t already — go check out No Shelter.
From what I hear, it’s a pretty good yarn.
The first live reading will start at 7 pm EST; the second live reading will start at 7 pm EST. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them in the comments section at any time and I’ll answer them at the end. Thanks for stopping by!
Both readings are over. Thanks to everyone who came and hung out!
